


Ugly Pretty

by jaboticaba



Category: Zombieland Saga (Anime)
Genre: Career Ending Injuries, Idol stuff man, Temporary Character Death, but it's nongraphic and happens before the story, reverse au, wack that there hasn't been a role reverse au yet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaboticaba/pseuds/jaboticaba
Summary: The idol industry is cutthroat. Making headway in it is hard enough but kindness is a lot harder to find when you aren't pretty. Seven terribly unlucky girls find a reason to try despite it all after they discover something that shouldn't exist. Zombieland Saga Reverse Au.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Ugly Pretty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that trailer for season 2, huh? Now I need to get my stuff out before the wave of new fics come in and I get buried

If someone were to pulled out to sea by a riptide and make it back to shore within an inch of their life, are they lucky for having survived or unlucky for getting caught in the first place?

Some optimistic people might proclaim this to be a sigh of great luck but, Dear Reader, there is nothing great here. If you have come to this story looking for a humorous romp about seven cute girls going on cartoonish misadventures then you will not find it here. This is a dreary story about seven terribly unlucky girls and their tales of woe that will turn your world as blue as Monet's Blue period (it's very important to make references to art history, no matter how shoehorned because it will make the story seem smart).

Sakura Minamoto was the type of person who would proclaim that a person who survived being carried by a riptide to be extremely lucky though she was more likely to hear those words thrown at her than she was to every get the chance to say them to someone else. You see, Sakura was plagued by terrible luck. The more she set her mind to something, the more a jinx would find a way to hit her like a truck, including with a truck. Determine to not learn her lesson that trying meant probably failing, Sakura left her home for school one morning with an application for the nearest idol agency in her hand and a song in her heart. She woke up three months later with a spiffy new neck brace, back brace, a sling that fastened her right arm to her shoulder, and a forehead scar so massive that no amount of fussing with her bangs could possibly hide it.

That, Dear Reader, is but your introduction to the story. Let it be _subtly_ foreshadowed that it only goes down hill from here and leads to off of a trench of rejection and sunburns and other horrible things. The world is dark enough as it is, there's probably a fluffy shipping fic that you could be reading instead.

Sakura Minamoto began her day as she would any other since her transfer from the hospital to the rehabilitation center. She passed by a door that never opened. A clipboard beside the door said that the patient's name was Junko Konno, Sakura didn't know much about her other than that Junko was only a few years older than her. The clipboard never changed and the door never opened. Sakura had tried many times knocking and introducing herself through the door but Junko never responded. Sakura was starting to wonder if this Junko girl was in a coma.

Like every day, after she had stopped at the door, Sakura made her to Physical Therapy Room B. The center was a clean, well lit place if a bit dull. The doctors were kind and helpful, hopeful even that Sakura would be able to go home soon. If it weren't for the fact that Sakura's family lived so out of the way, she would have gone home from the hospital and only come to the rehab center for appointments. The physical therapy room was mostly empty. A single nurse sat nearby to watch the only other two patients in the room.

A wheel chair was cast aside as a short girl with a wild mane of dyed blonde hair tightly gripped a twin set of metal bars that only came up to her waist. Her entire body was shaking but her face held a look of pure determination as her feet slowly shuffled forward.

"You're doing great, Saki!" Sakura called out to her.

"Can it, Egghead! I'm trying to focus!" Saki was loud in every sense of the word but her voice was a league of its own. When the two first met, Saki's jaws was wired shut and she could scarcely move an inch of her body. Then came the day that Saki's wires came off and she immediately cussed out Sakura much to the latter's shock.

The other patient in the room was a woman named Tae, who was currently sprawled out on the floor. Once she had noticed that Sakura had come in, she shambled to her feet and approached the girl with incoherent mumbling.

"Are you ready to practice, Tae?" The older woman lazily nodded so Sakura withdrew her phone and dialed through her music library. The two moved to an area of the room with open space and Sakura set her phone down on a chair once she found the right song. "Alright, try to mirror me!"

Though her efforts to become an idol had resulted in Sakura being mowed down by a truck, she had not yet abandoned her dreams. All of those days when she was trapped in a hospital bed and unable to move, she had nothing better to do than to memorize the songs she wanted to sing in her audition until she could recite the lyrics perfectly and when she was able to walk again, Sakura went about modifying a dance routine to work with one arm and with minimal bending. She couldn't remember exactly when Tae had started to copy her but it steadily evolved into Tae trying to do the routine so long as Sakura was there to guide her.

With patient confidentiality, doctors couldn't tell Sakura what had happened to Tae. She knew it was a brain injury and a rather severe one at that but not what caused it or any other aspect of the woman's life. No one ever seemed to visit Tae so Sakura couldn't ask her family what happened either. Tae was forced to relearn everything- from how to walk to how to talk, the latter of which she was greatly struggling with. She was perhaps the only person who really did make Sakura feel lucky, knowing that she could have very easily wound up the same way.

The two completed the routine to the best of their abilities, which for Tae was barely by even the most general of estimates, and Sakura began the tenuous process of sitting down for a break.

"Sooo-" Saki called out. "what's the point of all this stuff?" She leaned against the bars to let it take her weight. Saki didn't want to sit back down in that chair just yet, there were few things in this world that she hated more. "You act like this is your job or something."

"Well, when I get discharged, I want to be an idol so I have to be ready!"

Uproarious laughter was not the reaction Sakura had hoped for.

“Oh- dream on! They’re-whew!- They’re gonna take one look at that cracked egg you call a face and shoot you down! _‘Oh look at me, I can’t turn my head or bend my back but you can count on me to do the dance!_ ’” Sometimes, Sakura missed the days when Saki’s jaw was wired shut.

“I know I don’t l look like the average idol exactly but I plan to show them that I have the skill and drive to go all the way!”

“They’re going to tear you apart.”

Sakura could be truly bullheaded at times, maybe that was why she was still alive after such a severe skull fracture like hers, because she had sent in her application and audition reel in anyway. Amazingly, just a few days later she received a callback that asked her to come audition in person. Sakura would be jumping for joy if she could jump.

However, it should be noted that Sakura's audition reel was created prior to her accident.

“Sakura Minamoto?”

“Yes, that’s me!” She giddily shambled into the room when they called her name. Sakura had hardly been able to sleep these last few nights because she was so excited. Her glee could be felt miles away and the sight of a group of middle-aged adults staring down at a form was the most exciting thing she had ever seen.

“We’ve been watching your tape and we li-“ The man in charged looked up at her and failed to finish his sentence. One by one the other heads raised and stared. “…What happened to you?”

“I was in an accident, but don’t worry! I’m healing very well and the doctor says that in a few months I won’t need any of this anymore!”

“And the scar will heal too?”

Sakura’s enthusiasm greatly curbed itself. The scar took center stage on her forehead, it disrupted her hairline and eyebrow to stretch out its spidering lines. “…It’s a scar.”

“Can you imagine what a scar like that would be like on a poster?” One of the talent agents asked the other, so quickly they had started to act like she wasn’t in the room. “What if they think we’re trying to do some horror thing? I mean, she looks like she took an ax to the face!”

Their all too loud murmuring ceased and the leader turned back to her. “We will have to respectfully decline your application for failure to accurately represent yourself.”

“But-but- I can do the dances! I may have a neck brace but it hasn’t affected my singing at all, I promise!”

“I’m sorry but we are very busy today, there are many more girls we need to get through. Please go before we have you escorted out.”

That was par for the course when it came to Sakura Minamoto, she tried to make something of herself and when a brush with death wasn’t enough, callous rejection came in a second wave.


End file.
